


Live in the moments

by FaiaHae



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Ashe is rich as hell, Brief mentions of an open marriage, Childhood Friends, F/F, In which Ashe and Amelie met when they were very young, Kidfic, Kids to Teens to Adults, Ouihaw, Slow Burn, because they had rich fucking families, if you're not into that then just skip chapter 3 it won't be mentioned again, long timeline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-08-22 07:57:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16593902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaiaHae/pseuds/FaiaHae
Summary: Ashe has met Amélie many times before she meets the Widow





	1. takes the cake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [noxumbre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxumbre/gifts).



Amélie Guilliard was too young for her parents parties.

 

That’s what they’d told her for years, and for years she had pitched fits and cried and screamed and tried to sneak down anyway- only to be caught and brought back upstairs immediately. 

 

Only, this year, they’d finally let her come, let the maids do her hair and dress her and she’d waited for hours to finally go downstairs and-

 

And they were right.

 

She stood in the corner with her tiny glass of bubbly cider, staring down at the shoes that were pinching her feet, and desperately wishing that she could go back upstairs and play with her dolls, or to the studio to practice her ballet. The adults were nice, but cold, and they all seemed too eager to make her like them, too eager to mention their names. She knew they wanted her to pass on word to her parents she’d been nice, and she wanted none of it, and had excused herself as politely as possible and scampered over to the table and taken lots and lots of cookies so she could pretend her mouth was full and she couldn’t talk. Just so long as she kept eating, no one would-

 

“You look about as uncomfortable as I feel.”

 

Amélie almost choked, and a hand patted her back as someone reached around her to grab the rest of the cookies off of her plate.

  
“-hey!” She spun, and froze when she met two bright red eyes. 

 

Her hesitation was enough time for the other person to finish eating her cookies as Amélie took them in. 

 

Tall, a little older then she was (she wasn’t going to ask how older, because mom always said  _ a lady never admits her age _ ). A  _ lady _ . Pretty. Long white hair and bright red eyes, and a grin that said she knew Amélie was looking. Amélie blushed a bit and looked back at her feet.

 

“What’s your name? Sorry I stole your cookies, they didn’t have any left. You can have some of this though.” Something was placed on her plate, and Amélie looked up again.

 

It was half of a piece of cake- the one off the centerpiece Mom had absolutely forbidden her from touching. The one in the kitchen that hadn’t been brought out yet. 

 

“How did you-”

  
“Ssssh.” 

The other girl held a finger to her lips, grinning, and then ducked down. Amélie watched with bafflement as she climbed under the table, and then a hand stuck out from under the tablecloth and beckoned.

 

Amélie took a quick glance around. No one was looking her way. She took a deep breath, and then ducked under the table. 

 

The other girl was sprawled out, and Amélie could see jeans poking out from underneath her gown. 

 

“...what’s your name?” Amélie asked, tucking her legs underneath her primly as she settled the cake plate on her knees.

  
“Ashe.”

  
  


Ashe stuffed her cake in her mouth, and Amélie’s eyes narrowed. She knew a dodge when she saw one.

 

“No it isn’t.”

“Is so.”

“Nu-uh. Mom made me memorize the guest list.”

 

Ashe raised an eyebrow.

 

“Oh, so you’re the Guilliard girl. My mom said I shouldn’t talk to you.”

 

Amélie gaped, forgetting all about the lie and Ashe’s name.

 

“Why?? Did I do something wrong? Mom says-”

  
“No, it’s got nothin’ to do with you. I’m a bad influence, apparently.”

 

Amélie frowned. She hadn’t heard those words before. Dad sometimes said people were ‘influential’. That was a good thing, wasn’t it? But bad was bad.

 

“You seem nice to me.”

 

Ashe shrugged, taking another bite of cake. 

 

“I’m the fucking nicest.”

 

Amélie shrieked at the bad word, and that’s when someone moved the table.


	2. Bump in the road

 

In Ashe’s defense, she hadn’t really  _ meant  _ to kidnap anyone. 

 

Sometimes you’re holding up a train and people just start to get a bit  _ rowdy _ , and maybe you’re a little high-strung because your second in command defected last week and the next thing you know you’ve grabbed the first person you see and you’ve got a gun to their head and honestly, you’ve lost as much control of this situation as anyone else has, you’re the  _ real  _ victim here. 

 

Except they’re not as much of a pushover as you expected and try to fight you and Bob goes into defense mode and grabs them and then the alarm gets pulled and you have to  _ go, now  _ and well. Bob forgot to put her down.

 

That was Ashe’s story and she was sticking to it. Bob forgot to put her down. 

 

“Jesus Christ Bob, how could you just-”

 

“I am so sorry-”

 

“...Ashe?”

 

Ashe froze. That. That voice. She spins on her heel and takes a good look at the girl she’s got tied to her favorite armchair.

 

“Aw Christ.”

 

Amélie was blinking dazedly, recovering from the temporary unconsciousness brought on by the shock of jumping off a train (and absolutely not from Bob knocking her out, nope, that hadn’t happened.)

 

“-Ashe? From the- do you remember-?”

 

Ashe grinned despite herself.

  
“Yeah. You’re the brat who got us caught. I didn’t even get to finish my cake.”

 

Amélie laughed, and then seemed to realize she was tied to a chair. She looked down at the restraints, then back up at Ashe. Ashe could feel Amélie picking apart her outfit- the vest, the chaps, the cowboy hat, the bandada with “The Deadlock Gang” written on it...

 

She swore, colorfully and at great length, in french.

 

Ashe blinked.

 

Maybe she  _ was  _ a bad influence.

 

“I- I have a ballet performance! You can’t hold me for ransom- mom always waits at least 48 hours before she responds to those calls and the concert is-”

 

“She what?”   
  


“In case the police are competent and the kidnappers aren’t. Not that I think you’re not competent! I just can’t afford to wait that long!”

 

Ashe remembered carrying around an envelope to pay her own ransom, and sighed.

 

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t gonna...Bob, can you untie her? I really don’t need the money, as you may recall.”

 

Amélie seemed to calm for a moment, and then her eyes went wide again.

  
“Where are we?”

 

“...New mexico?”

  
“My train! I can’t make my concert if I don’t-”

 

Ashe pressed her face into her palms. She was the worst bandit ever. No wonder Jesse had defected. 

 

“I’ll.....I’ll give you a ride. Bob, can you grab me my suit?”

 

-

 

To Ashe’s immense relief, they’d beat the train in (thank god for stolen military-grade hoverbikes) and Ashe felt secure enough in her wig and her suit to stand by Amélie’s side in the station as she picked up her luggage and reassured the conductors that she was alright, there was  _ no need  _ to alarm her parents by informing them she’d ever left the train. She’d hustled away the moment she’d had the reassurance that they wouldn’t, grabbing Ashe’s elbow and tugging her down the street in the direction of the theater. Ashe, bemused, went along without protest. Bob was- as always- at her elbow. He was dressed up in a matching outfit- all reds and grays, with a different hat and decals over his more distinctive markers. 

 

She felt a little pang, looking at him. They’d known what to cover with Jesse’s help, and she kept looking around Bob, expecting to see him there with some snark for her about her  _ ladylike manners.  _

  
The silence weighed a little too heavy.

 

Amélie didn’t seem accustomed to filling it, but she was giving it her best anyway. 

 

“I hope you can stay, they always give me free tickets to performances/ We’re doing Swan Lake.”

 

Ashe made a noncommittal noise, her mind still on the empty space on Bob’s other side. 

“Not much for culture, nowadays.”

 

She could  _ feel  _ Amélie droop.

 

“Oh....of course...”

 

She thought about those empty seats that never got taken. The invites to school events that were never accepted.

  
“...Suppose it’s been a while. It might be a nice change.”

 

Amélie grinned, and Ashe’s heart skipped a beat. 

 

_ Oh no. _

 

The performance was beautiful, and Ashe bought Amélie a bouquet of roses she left with the stage manager before she headed back into the desert. No more trust. No more attachments. Jesse should have been lesson enough.

  
Still, if she bought a recording on her way out and kept the program...that was her business.


	3. Poor planning

Amélie Lacroix was not an official member of Overwatch. 

 

She was not, and so did not have clearance to know things like  _ high priority prisoners  _ and which agents could absolutely, under no circumstances, know they were in lockup.

 

Poor McCree.

 

But her husband believed in honesty and openness as the foundations of a good marriage, and so they talked, and sometimes some of those details....were not things that she was allowed to know. 

 

But she found herself knowing, and she found herself moving down the hallways of the Overwatch holding cells, counting the rooms till she got to 66. 

 

And there, sitting in the center of the floor, was a woman she hadn’t seen in years.

 

“Ashe.”

 

Elizabeth Calamity Caledonia raised her head, frowning out into the shadows before her eyes focused on Amélie, and then she raised a single eyebrow. It was almost hard to see the gesture, the dye was fading from her eyebrows, they were going back to white. 

 

“Well now. Did I get visitation permissions? That wasn’t terribly smart.”

 

Amélie huffed.

 

“Do you forget your old friends so easily?”

 

“Not sure I ever really had friends, but sorry. I can’t really recognize you with that hood up.”

 

“Some of us are not as eager to be caught as you are, mon chéri.”

 

She could see the moment Ashe recognized her, the grin tugging the corner of her lips (not their usual bright red- she must have been in here a few days.)

 

“Well well well. My ballerina. How’d you get in here?”

  
  


“I-”

 

“She used my computer to look up the guard rotation and walzed right in, but forgot to close the tab on my computer! And neglected to disable the security cameras. Clever, but not quite clever enough, my dear.”

 

Amélie spun, caught red handed, and tried to stammer out some defence, but Gérard waved her off.

 

“My dear, you have told that story about the bandit and the train enough times. I knew you were going to free her. And I can’t let you do that.”

 

“Gérard-”

 

“Can’t let you do it without me!” Gérard grinned, holding up a shimmering access card.

 

Both women blinked at him. He did a little jazz hands gesture.

  
“What? No thanks? Oh if you insist I can go back home and wait-”

 

“Nono- please help.” Ashe waved an arm at him, making a grabbing gesture for the key.   
  
“Mighty pleased to meet you, and for your assistance.”

 

“-Gérard, are you sure-?”

 

“I can’t let you get arrested, my dear, we haven’t had our honeymoon yet!” He wrapped an arm around Amélie’s waist and kissed her on the cheek, and then slid the key into the slot. Ashe’s door disengaged and she stepped out, offering Gérard her handcuffed wrists. He picked the lock.

 

“Now, I know you had an escape plan about half in place. The window at the end of the hall is open, and we’ll hold your rope for you when you jump out. From there you can get into the boat your companion has been hiding in at the base of the cliff.”

 

He lifted the rope, grinning cheerfully. 

 

“I’m gonna go tie this off. You two can talk.” He headed to the window, and Amélie turned to Ashe, suddenly losing all the words she was going to say. Ashe seemed to feel the same, looking after Gérard. After a moment, Ashe seemed to find the words.

  
“Are you happy?”

 

“Yes.” Amélie rubbed her thumb over her wedding ring, smiling.

  
“I...am not lonely, anymore. I just wanted to find a way to thank you for being there when I was.”

 

Ashe smiled, but it seemed a bit bittersweet.   
  
“I thought about ya’. Didn’t think this was how we’d see each other again.” 

 

“Life is strange, I suppose.”

 

Ashe looked positively wretched, and Amélie couldn’t help but reach out and wrap her arms around her, hugging her tight. Ashe melted into the hug, burying her face in Amélie’s shoulder, and Amélie had to wonder if anyone had ever hugged Ashe- she remembered their childhoods, how cold the mansions and the parties always were. 

 

“Thanks for tryin’ to rescue me.” Ashe whispered. “Even if you didn’t think it through terribly well.”

 

Amélie snorted, letting go of Ashe and giving her a light shove toward the window.

 

“I don’t want to hear that from the woman ‘ose plan was apparently to jump out a window.”

 

Ashe made a motion to tip her hat, her face registering a profound sense of loss when her fingers closed on empty air, and Amélie just  _ had  _ to give her another hug.

  
“Stay safe.” she managed.

 

“Stay happy.” Ashe replied, and pressed her lips to Amélie’s forehead for just a moment before she turned, took the rope Gérard was offering, and rappelled out the window. Gérard gave her a moment to collect herself before leading her towards an unmarked door they had to crouch to get through. He’d barely gotten it closed before the alarms started blaring behind them. He grinned at her in the near-darkness of a few dim stair lights- this was clearly a maintenance shaft.

 

“You know, after all of that trouble, you could have kissed her-”

“Gérard!” She hissed,blushing furiously, but he just laughed and wrapped an arm around her waist, leading her down the stairs and away from the frantic scuffle starting in the hallway.

 

“All this trouble for your childhood hero! And just a forehead kiss-”

  
“Gérard, aren’t we supposed to be escaping?”

 

“We are, mon ami, but i’m just  _ saying-” _

 

She shoved him, trying to suppress a smile.

  
“Whatever you  _ say _ , you can say at  _ home. _ ”


	4. Without a trace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I lied there's more polyamory discussion, and more Gérard (and if this isn't your thing, don't worry! he'll be dead soon! thanks canon!)
> 
> also this chapter´s sad. I´m sorry.

Ashe saw the news the day Amélie goes missing, and is on her way out to do something- anything- when a grunt comes running into base, looking panicked.

 

“Boss- there’s a man- He’s taken out 5 of our-”

The grunt goes down like a puppet with its strings cut, and Ashe sees the dart sticking out of his neck before a man in a suit settles against the doorframe, a gun casually leaned against his shoulder, as though he hadn’t just used it.

 

“You need to improve or relax your security, and frankly, I am not sure which.”

 

Ashe sighed, lowering her gun.

 

“Maybe you need to bring a white flag with you and not just knock out everyone on your way in. A few of my men are decent shots.”

 

“Are they?” Gérard grinned, as though they were old friends. Ashe tried to hold on to her tension, but found it bleeding out of her. She sighed.

 

“They’re out, as it happens. If I didn’t know any better I’d say you waited for them to leave.”

 

“Would have, if the mission were less urgent.”

 

Ashe nodded.

 

“You want a drink?”

 

“I suppose that’s your way of saying my wife isn’t here?” 

 

Ashe raised an eyebrow at Gérard, pouring him a glass of wine from her personal store. 

 

“Why would she be?”

 

“Well, I was kind of hoping she’d just run off into the sunset with her favorite cowgirl. It was certainly the more attractive option.”

 

Ashe nearly dropped the glass, and Gérard’s hand shot out to catch it. He smiled at her, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  
She understood. Still, she choked out a laugh.

 

“Is that something you were expecting her to do? And what would you have done if she were here?”

 

“Oh, you know. Professed my undying devotion. Challenge you to one of your ‘Texas showdowns’ as McCree calls them. Ask you nicely to consider discussing a polyamorous arrangement. I suppose it doesn’t matter now.”

 

Ashe really did choke on her wine that time, but it settled cold in her stomach on Gérard´s last words.

 

“You don’t think she’s coming back.”

 

It wasn’t a question, so Gérard didn’t treat it as one.

 

“Talon took her. Anyone else would have left a trace. There would have been video of the abduction. There would be a sign. Anything. But she’s just gone, as though she just....vanished into the air.”

 

Ashe swore.

 

“Then we’ll-.”

 

He waved her off.

 

“Jack has assigned all his forces to it, and blackwatch is looking for her too. I am not here to ask for your aid. I cannot do more then is already being done, and neither can you.”

 

It rose in her chest, bitter, like a shout, like she wanted to deny it somethin’ awful, but he was right. She sat down behind her desk, and poured herself another glass of wine.

 

“So what are you here for, then?”

 

He shrugged. He looked defeated, shrinking in his suit like a child wearing his father’s clothes. Like a man suddenly in shoes too big for him to fill.

 

“You love her too. I suppose I...need support. From someone who understands.”

 

Ashe’s chest twisted, but she smiled.

 

“Well. You can’t stop me from askin’ my men to keep an eye out. And I....We’ll find her, Gérard. And in the meantime, you’re welcome here.”

 

He settled down across from her without another word, and she poured him another glass of wine.

 

She hoped, desperately, that she was telling the truth. 


	5. Old Friends

Widowmaker didn’t have friends.

This struck her as...odd. She knew it, and Moira reminded her often. Reaper did too, but when he said it it sounded like a warning instead of a threat. It was odd. Still, she would have known without the reminder.

 

Sombra insisted they were friends. Widowmaker didn’t believe her.

 

But somehow, when the words were said, something went off in her chest, like a discordant note, like a string breaking on a guitar. Something struck her as just slightly wrong, like there was one thing she should be able to notice.

  
It wasn’t about that man- Gérard- he had been her friend, once. She knew that. But it wasn’t him. Sometimes when she thought about him it was a whole orchestra, playing the wrong instruments, like the whole picture was wrong. Her whole world was a few shades of the wrong color, and then Moira took her back in for adjustments, and it went away again.

 

But the note. 

 

No matter how many times Moira stuck her long fingers into Widowmaker’s mind, no matter how many tune-ups, it was always there. 

 

And then the Widowmaker met Ashe.

 

And the note became a song.

 

__

 

Ashe met the Widowmaker on what should have been a fairly standard job. She was in Paris, negotiating a deal with an up-and-coming arms dealer, and-

 

She felt it almost a fraction of a second too late, almost, and she dove and whipped out her rifle just as the shot went through her hair as she moved. She swore, slapping her hand against the back of her neck. Shit, that was close. She took off toward the roof, getting ready for long range as she hit the open air and raised her eye to the scope and-

 

And-

 

For a minute, they looked at each other through their scopes- but Ashe knew that silouette. She knew that hair. She’d known Amélie for years. There was no mistaking her- even if her porcelain skin was blue, even with the lenses against her eyes. 

 

Shit.

  
Talon had gotten her.

She dropped the gun.

 

____

 

Widowmaker looked through the scope, and she heard it, again. The note. And then a song- Dance of the Cygnets, Tchaikovsky. She remembered something. A stage. The lights were bright, and she could hardly see the crowd in front of her, but she knew that seats that had been empty for years were filled. Her mind’s eye filled in what she could hardly see- a big omnic in a tiny bowler hat, and an albino woman with a long white braid. 

 

She was smiling at Am- at Amé- at-

 

The present fell in around her. The woman through her scope was standing in the dark, in her cowboy hat. Her hair was in a sharply cut bob, and it blew in the wind. She had her chin up, a look of angry defiance in her eyes, the corner of her lips pulled down. She had the barrel of her gun rested on the ground. 

 

It would be the easiest thing in the world to pull the trigger.

 

Widowmaker didn’t do it.


End file.
